[Gitterdone]

Just received an email about this, thought everyone would be interested. I have cut back on soda a lot this year, but if this is true, I would be willing to quit.....

If you type Aspartame into Google search, it comes up with 250,000 links,
all bad except for companies using it. Where there's that much smoke,
there's got to be fire of some sort!

[mnemosyne]

Hey, I know it sounds scary and accurate, but I think that this is essentially a hoax - an urban legend. Check out:

http://www.snopes.com/toxins/aspartame.asp

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/aspartame-0916.html

In reasonable portions, aspartame is safe for most people. If you want to quit drinking diet soda entirely, though, and this motivates you to do so, I suppose it's not a big deal, but if you aren't going to quit and are just going to worry about it, well, better to enjoy the occasional diet soda without worry. I bet the worry is worse for you than the aspartame.

[funniegrrl]

Yes, this is a well-known hoax. Here is a post by MrsJim on another thread that promoted these rumors:

And for the record...this same hoo-hah went on back in the late 1970's when MEGADOSES of saccharin were found in a few studies to cause tumors in rats. (Keep in mind that the amount of saccharin the rats were given was WAY more than a person would be able to, or want to, ingest in the same amount of time.) In fact, the talk of banning saccharin was the catalyst for getting NutraSweet on the market and into products such as diet drinks, etc. (aspartame had, in fact, been developed in 1966, and was throughly tested - the reason it wasn't used in products quicker was the significantly higher cost of Aspartame compared to saccharin.)

If you want an example of someone who's used artificial sweeteners for decades with no harm whatsoever - look at *me*. My father was in the food industry since the late 1950's. When I was a kid, I drank a LOT of diet soda. And I mean a LOT - our garage was FILLED with cases of the stuff. I'm too young to remember cyclamates (which were banned in the 1960's) but I do remember drinking lots of saccharin-sweetened drinks. Dad started working with aspartame (NutraSweet) back in, oh, I'd say the early 70's, at least that's when he started bringing home gum and stuff that was sweetened with aspartame for us kids to use. My dad was no slouch in the lab - he'd done enough analysis and work with aspartame and saccharin to know that it wasn't going to kill us or hurt us, and felt perfectly safe in giving it to us. I've drank Diet Coke pretty regularly since it was introduced in 1981/1982 - first it was saccharin-sweetened, then later in oh, around 82-83, they started using aspartame instead.

I DO know people who get headaches from using aspartame (not sure about Splenda) or it tastes yukky to them. We're all different, and different substances are going to affect each one of us in different ways. (for example - if I even have a small glass of wine or alcohol, I'm virtually guaranteed a throbbing headache the next morning.) Not that I'm a doctor or anything, but I consider it similar to Chinese Restaurant Syndrome - you know, people who are supersensitive to MSG. But I don't see anyone jumping up and down saying to ban MSG!

My final thoughts on artificial sweeteners in general: If you like them, use them. If you don't like them or feel you experience ill effects from them, don't use them.

[Gitterdone]

OMG!! Sorry about printing that then. Thanks for setting the record straight!!!
*cracks open diet coke*

[Forever42]

I came over to this thread because I figured it'd be about aspartame. Glad to see it was all figured out quickly! I tried to help someone on another forum with regards to aspartame claims and I was jumped all over. I even was just about accused for working for an aspartame company because I said that there was nothing wrong with it.

Anyway, yep, aspartame is nothing to worry about as long as you don't have PKU (inability to process phenylalanine). In fact, because aspartame is just a combination of two amino acids, when you eat protein, you have more of the metabolites associated with aspartame than when you have aspartame itself.

[Charlotte2]

I have read that diet drinks can make you crave carbs - the logic is something like this: sweet taste in mouth encourages body to release insulin into the blood stream, in anticipation of sugar. Drink gets digested... but no sugar enters the bloodstream because its a diet drink. Now there is to much insulin in the bloodstream, so the body tries to get back in balance, and the easiest way to do that is to eat something. Don't know how true that is, but it does make some sense. Just in case, I tend to only drink diet pop at meals.

[SuchAPrettyFace]

Just a note about saccharine, you would have to drink 750 cans of diet soda EVERY DAY for 20 years to get cancer from the amount of saccharine in diet soda.

Bring on the TAB!

[Forever42]

Originally Posted by Charlotte2

I have read that diet drinks can make you crave carbs - the logic is something like this: sweet taste in mouth encourages body to release insulin into the blood stream, in anticipation of sugar. Drink gets digested... but no sugar enters the bloodstream because its a diet drink. Now there is to much insulin in the bloodstream, so the body tries to get back in balance, and the easiest way to do that is to eat something. Don't know how true that is, but it does make some sense. Just in case, I tend to only drink diet pop at meals.

Actually, I'm finding that it's believed that caffeine is what causes insulin spikes, and that it's just the sweetness of the soda that causes more sugar cravings but doesn't have anything to do with insulin.

[Sis]

Can't say if all that is true or not. All I know is I can't drink diet pop with nutrasweet/asparteme without having severe migrains. I was on migrain meds and was having them a lot when I ran across an article in Womans Day saying there was a link between nutrasweet and migrains. I decided to stop eating or drinking anything with it in it for a while to see and I have basically stopped having migrains. I do get an occasional headache but not the migrain variety. So I guess you have to draw your own conclusions on the stuff. Have a great day.....Sis

[bicker]

There sure does seems to be a set of folks who react negatively to Nutrasweet. My great aunt reacts very negatively. It's never had any effect on me. YMMV.

[a broad abroad]

I do think that aspartame "goes off" after a certain amount of time or being exposed to high temps for prolonged periods. On several occasions I have had to throw away a canned diet soda because it didn't taste right. Some of the times the product was past the expiration date, and other times it wasn't stored properly (I knew that for a fact.)

Lately I've been sticking with Splenda, but its only a matter of time before something comes up about that, too.

[browniegurl]

Artifical sweetners taste nasty to me anyways, so I try to avoid them as much as usual. It's kinda funny that you posted this as I just wrote a lil blirp in my journal about this same subject.

[Forever42]

Originally Posted by Sis

Can't say if all that is true or not. All I know is I can't drink diet pop with nutrasweet/asparteme without having severe migrains. I was on migrain meds and was having them a lot when I ran across an article in Womans Day saying there was a link between nutrasweet and migrains. I decided to stop eating or drinking anything with it in it for a while to see and I have basically stopped having migrains. I do get an occasional headache but not the migrain variety. So I guess you have to draw your own conclusions on the stuff. Have a great day.....Sis

How often do you have anything with caffeine in it? Many times it's been found that it's the caffeine that's been triggering headaches in people when they drink diet soda.

And unfortunately, many groups are up in arms already about Splenda. It's a sugar (sucrose) molecule with chlorine atoms substituted for some of the oxygen molecules, which makes it too large of a molecule to digest. A lot of people forget that table salt is sodium chloride when they mention the chlorine in Splenda.

[meaganUGA]

Originally Posted by Gitterdone

If you type Aspartame into Google search, it comes up with 250,000 links,
all bad except for companies using it. Where there's that much smoke,
there's got to be fire of some sort!

It’s easy to believe what one reads on the Internet but remember, anyone can create his or her own web site and act knowledgeable about a subject. I’ve been drinking diet soda for about ten years now so when I heard about this rumor, I decided to find some answers of my own. I looked at the studies that had been done on aspartame and they showed aspartame is safe. In addition, other sites show this is a hoax! Try this link www.aspartame.org

[bicker]

That's a good point. In many cases, there are political and other personal motivations for a vast majority of people expressing an opinion to try to cavalierly besmirch the reputation of a perfectly safe product.